Air Force To Rewrite the Rules of the Internet

meridiangod writes "The Air Force is fed up with a seemingly endless barrage of attacks on its computer networks from stealthy adversaries whose motives and even locations are unclear. So now the service is looking to restore its advantage on the virtual battlefield by doing nothing less than the rewriting the 'laws of cyberspace.'" I'm sure that'll work out really well for them.

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[bistromath007]

dontmesswithfootball

Re:It worked for the Army!

[solraith]

I'm trying to think of some terrible pun relating modulated farting to smoke signals, but I'm drawing a blank.

Re:It worked for the Army!

[interiot]

It took 5 years, but they finally trained operatives to intercept and understand modulated farting communications from terrorists. But then the terrorists starting using Navajo modulated farting, and well... their farts are just too smelly.

USAF History of Redefinition

[DynaSoar]

"I'm sure that'll work out really well for them."

Why shouldn't it? They seem to do rather well when they decide to redefine things.

After an unfortunate incident in New Mexico involving something that definitely wasn't a UFO, they produced Air Force Regulation 200-2, the rules for reporting UFOs, including as a matter of course the necessary definitions of all things UFOish. With that regulation firmly in place, they created Project Blue Book to investigate UFOs. Blue Book concluded, as they always have before and after Blue Book, that UFOs don't exist. Having defined UFOs out of existence, they maintain AFR 200-2 to keep UFOs defined away.

Should any UFOs happen to appear and be shown to actually exist, we can only conclude that the owner/operator of such a craft has either not yet heard of AFR 200-2, or is unable to read it. Defending the planet then will not require an ex-fighter pilot US president ordering a computer virus to be delivered to their mothership. Instead, all that will need to be done is establish communication and reading AFR 200-2 (and possibly the Blue Book conclusion studies) to them.

A more prosaic example is the Air Force manual regarding testing of fuels and the components therein. They define "mogas" (motor vehicle gasoline) as having too little benzene to be a health risk. The equivalent civilian fuel contains 100 to 1000 times more benzene than the level considered a health risk. This works so well that USAF orders its mogas from the same civilian suppliers that deliver to gas stations, but their redefinition protects service members working on fuel systems from benzene exposure. Unfortunately, civilian employees get hazardous duty pay for working in situations where they're exposed to benzene in mogas, because their labor union prevents the AF testing manual and its definitions from protecting them adequately.